Compare Trailer Spoof, which is for a real movie, just not the one you thought it was.

Intentional spoofs:

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Advertising

Falling in Lamb was an Australian commercial from a few years back, advertising lamb. It was short-lived, though, possibly due to the number of calls to local theatres enquiring about the release date of this new romantic comedy.

Lucky Star (no, not the anime), starring Benicio Del Toro. There has to be more than one person who saw it repeatedly on TV and never realized it was a car commercial.

There was a trailer for an excellent sounding movie playing in a local movie theatre, but it is disappointing to find out it's just a anti-dandruff shampoo ad.

There's a whole series of fake trailers used by the AMC theater chain, to warn audiences to pipe down and turn off their personal electronics. Each one opens as expected for its genre (period Kung Fu flick, DisneyTalking Animal cartoon, etc), only to be derailed when a cell phone rings, distracting the characters at some critical moment. Hilarity Ensues.

Speaking of silencing your cell phone, a policy shown in Israel movie theaters called "Fatal Call" starts out like a movie trailer, but you know from the beginning, since it takes place in a movie theater. The trailer contains a girl who is eating popcorn when her cell phone rings, and a voice from the phone says "Sarah! You shouldn't have answered! You should have left your cell phone off!" Then, Sarah chokes on her popcorn. Ah...don't you just love happy endings?

Scarlet looked like ads for a slick, spy-fi Spiritual Successor to Alias. It was an ad for a TV series, as in a series of TV's made by LG. Note a lot of the dialogue, such as "Putting her in every home on the planet," and saying "She's gonna change TV."

Geico made a trailer for a fake reality show titled Tiny House, about a couple living in a house that was built too small.

Cineplex theatres in Canada has a trailer for a time-travel movie that looks like a bigger budget version of Primer. The protagonist has to travel back in time to meet his girlfriend at a sold-out movie. Quote: "If you're not there tonight, I won't be here tomorrow." OR you could order tickets online.

Here's an action/comedy thriller starring the M&Ms Spokecandies!... except it turns out to be yet another "turn your cell phone off" ad.

One omake for Blue Seed was a kaiju movie parody staring the cast. The English version was even done with odd tone variations and poor lip-syncing like early dubbed films, capped off with informing viewers it was all a big lie.

Elf Princess Rane is a two-episode OAV that ends with trailers for the completely nonexistent third and fourth episodes.

A similar fate had befallen a number of short OAV series, especially during the 80s and 90s: The material produced was intended to be a pilot for a longer work, but the series was canned before it ever got off the ground. While not all of them necessarily had trailers produced advertising the dead-in-the-water series, see also the "in the next episode" bit advertising "Knight of Lemon" at the end of "Knights of Ramune" (which is promptly followed by a note that the series had been cancelled).

The second episode of Itsudatte My Santa has a trailer for the third episode, featuring Mai, MaiMai and Shirley living with Santa, a cooking competition between Mai and Shirley, and a sleigh and reindeer which turn into a Humongous Mecha to battle a presumably possessed Miss Noel. The trailer is revealed to be fake at the end.

Mai-Otome had a fake trailer on the DVDs for the Mai-HiME movie. Many people on AnimeSuki and Wiki.Wikipedia don't realize that it's a joke and keep asking when the movie will be released despite the release date being listed as 20006 [sic].

The last page of second volume of the hentai doujinshi Take on Me is intended to look like an advertisement for a anime adaptation. Far, far too many people have asked where they can find this movie, when it is coming out, etc. It's not, it's just the artist mind-screwing the audience.

Hyakko does this in episode six of the series, giving the audience a preview that has, among other things, an army of Mecha-Torakos, Evil!Suzume and a midair battle between Torako and her brother. It's also completely fake.

The first volume of The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi-chan contains a preview of a manga dealing with Itsuki's becoming an esper and joining the Organization... except Kyon disillusions him next page with a "Yeah, that trailer was a fake, Haruhi-chan is a gag-manga".

Subverted with Gintama, with the trailer for the Benizakura arc movie. It first shows up in the third season, when the characters admit that the trailer is fake. During the next season, the trailer is played again and the characters say it is actually coming out. Played straight with the second trailer, where the trailer is played and Gin follows up by telling us it is all a lie.

The trailer for Italian Spiderman has to be seen to be (dis)believed. SUSPENSO! It was so well-received that it's was expanded into a series, presented as parts of a recently recovered copy of the full movie.

The trailer for a "sequel" to Kung Pow! Enter the Fist was actually just deleted footage spliced together. In a strange twist, the film's producer tried to actually produce the sequel, but was denied funding as the original had been a box office flop.

The Mel Brooks parody History of the World Part I ends with a fake trailer for a part II. Wikipedia explains this as being a reference to the book The History of the World, whose author was beheaded before he could write a part 2.

The final number of the musical adaptation of Young Frankenstein mentions a Blazing Saddles musical coming 'next year'. That was 2010, so it very well may have been an example of this trope.

The Kentucky Fried Movie includes trailers for parodies of other films, including Catholic High School Girls In Trouble, That's Armageddon! and Cleopatra Schwartz (a parody of a blaxploitation film called 'Cleopatra Jones'').

Ben Stein's movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed was criticized for, amongst other things, lying to the interviewees about the nature of the film and cutting up interviews to change the meaning of what they said. Richard Dawkins, one of the scientists who claims to have been misquoted, produced his own satirical trailer for a possible sequel.

Tropic Thunder featured not one but four of these before the movie even starts, all featuring four of the main characters. The first is a fake commercial featuring Alpa Chino (a fictional rapper) as a spokesman for the now-real "Booty Sweat" drink, the second for the sixth installment in fictional action star Tugg Speedman's blockbuster Scorcher franchise, the third for an Eddie Murphy-style comedy called The Fatties: Fart 2 starring fictional comedian Jeff Portnoy, and the fourth for Satan's Alley, an Oscar Bait art film about gay medieval monks starring (the fake) Kirk Lazarus and (the real) Tobey Maguire.

Closet Cases of the Nerd Kind, a parody of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which involves aliens who hit people in the face with pies for no reason, singing mailboxes, and Darth Vader on a motorcycle telling the hero to stop holding up traffic.

On a similar note is this trailer for a graphically updated version of Majora's Mask. It has generated a lot of fan appeal, especially with people’s desire for a Majora's Mask remake on the 3DS.

In 2011 Egosoft, developer of the X-Universe series, released a trailer for an animated movie called Nautilus set in the series' universe. It was based on a fanfic by forum member NUKLEAR-SLUG about his Boron character Squiddy McSquid. It being April Fools' Day...

Homestar Runner has done this a few times, most famously making a fake trailer for a movie based on their game Peasant's Quest. According to their website, there already is a full-length Peasant's Quest movie: "its 'full length' is three minutes" (the length of the trailer).

See also the SBEmail "Narration", where Strong Bad narrates the lives of the residents of Free Country, USA as though they were movie trailers: Homestar and Marzipan are a couple torn apart by a novelty chef's hat, an argument between Coach Z and Bubs over napkins apparently leads to the fall of an empire, and Strong Sad gets a dead goose thrown at him.

Mikenel's Insert Title Here. An 2010 April Fool's Day gag based on his own fanart, it promised a crossover between characters from Invader Zim and Haruhi Suzumiya. While there are things to nitpick such as continuity errors, it is otherwise convincing.

This two-part trailer(here and here), "Orson Welles' "The Bat-Man"), was inspired by a widely-circulated(and debunked) internet rumor that Orson Welles wanted to direct a Batman movie during the 40s. The trailer consists of clips from a 40s Batman serial, along with other movies(including Citizen Kane and The Third Man), casting Orson Welles as Bruce Wayne, Joseph Cotton as Jim Gordon, Edgar G. Robinson as the Penguin, Marlena Dietrich as Catwoman and Conrad Veidt(with clips of "The Man Who Laughs"—ironically, the original inspiration for the character) as the Joker.

Used, but then turned into a subversion, by Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series: There was a trailer made for an Abridged version of Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie, that was never intended to be made into a full movie. Eventually, however, after a lot of people asked for it, Little Kuriboh did make a half-hour version of the movie, but with none of the lines from the original trailer (except one reference).

Grayson, a trailer for a film where a retired Robin once again takes up the mantle to solve the mystery of Batman's death. A script was even produced for a full feature and is available to read online.

Many trailers made for a Justice League movie are sadly just spliced scenes from The Dark Knight Saga and Superman Returns or Smallville with a handful of brief cuts of what are supposed to be the other heroes. A few even add in close up shots of Megan Fox from the Transformers movies that make little sense even if you know of the untrue rumors about Fox starring in a Wonder Woman movie.

Another version of mash-ups uses the sound from one trailer and the footage from another trailer/movie/TV show. An excellent example would be Toy Story Requiem: footage from Toy Story and Toy Story 2 with the sound from Requiem of a Dream.

Cock and Load a Grindhouse style preview about a man who has his penis replaced with a shotgun and uses it to fight the mob. Must be seen to be believed.

Dawn Of Fire, although it's actually supposed to be the opening titles of the (fake) movie rather than the trailer. The cast and crew alone may make you want to see the movie anyway.

There's a fake IMDB page out there somewhere for what sounds like a truly dreadful In Name Only film adaptation of China Miéville's Perdido Street Station. It's had many Mieville fans absolutely furious until they notice it's a satire.

For a while now, there's been this fake trailer for a Mega Man Movie that's a parody of the cheapest In Name Only adaptions that only take a few select bits of the source material and plug them into what's otherwise a generic hollywood plot. Funnily enough, it actually looks pretty good and there are many comments claiming that they'd genuinely go see it.

X-Play did a similar thing, but with less Chris Tucker and more straight badassery. See the scene at the beginning where Jesus pulls himself off the cross and USES THE NAILS IN HIS HANDS AS WEAPONS.

Meapless in Seattle was supposed to be a trailer for a fake episode for Phineas and Ferb, until they made it into a real episode later on. That episode ended with another fake trailer for an episode called Meap Me in St. Louis.

Unintended spoofs:

Videogames

The ad for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was shown in theaters. It was so different from the style of the actual game that until the video started showing gameplay footage, some people have mistaken it for a trailer for a Zelda movie.

Same could be said for the MechWarrior 3 intro being shown in theaters. It practically could be considered a trailer for some kind of BattleTech movie.

Web Originals

There is someone trying to make a Final Fight movie, though he just needs the budget apparently to make it work. From the looks of the trailer it looks like he could do it.

Western Animation

The excellent Pyrats animation was a final project for an animation school in Paris. It will never be a movie, but it looks like a trailer (and people have reported that they would like to go and see it).

On 30 Rock, Tracy Jordan once made a trailer for his proposed biopic of Thomas Jefferson... with him playing all the parts. Highlights include Tracy as Jefferson proclaiming "Eat that, King George!" as he finishes writing the Declaration of Independence and the narrator describing him as an "Academy Award watcher".

Supernatural has a trailer for "Hell Hazers II: The Reckoning" in the episode "Hollywood Babylon."

The Daily Show advertises several fake products on a regular basis, including Jon magazine and the Daily Show Home Game. In 2003, they started airing joke trailers for a new spinoff called The Colbert Réport that had "already been cancelled". The Report premiered in 2005, and has been described as "the only show that started as a promo for itself".

How I Met Your Mother had one of these where a trailer for The Wedding Bride was mentioned on the show and the full trailer was released online here. The movie describes Ted's failed relationship with Stella however from the somewhat skewed mind of her ex-boyfriend, now-husband, Tony. Ted in one episode goes to see this movie more than once and, at one point, acts out something similar to it to is date while he is in the movie theatre.

The 100th episode, "Wormhole X-Treme!" took its name from a show based on the team, which the Air Force is letting go forward to give the SGC Plausible Deniability (assuming it stays on the air). After the opening titles SG-1 and Hammond are sitting in the briefing room watching a trailer for the show.

In the two-hundredth episode, titled "200," the team is giving advice on the production of a Wormhole X-Treme! movie adaptation. The opening to act four, which airs immediately after a commercial break and was intended to be mistaken for another commercial, is a trailer forTeal'c, P.I.. Bonus points for actually getting Isaac Hayes to do the narration.

The video for "Hang Me Up To Dry" by indie rock band Cold War Kids. It's filmed in black-and-white, set in a post-war (World War II?) era and revolves around the relationship of a pale-skinned brunette and a Loveable Rogue. The fact that it mentions that this is the third installment of a nonexistent trilogy turns this into a Foregone Conclusion whenever you watch it again (and again, and again), but some fans desperately yearn for Defictionalization.

The clip we see has a pile of poo flying though space shooting down flies with stink lines.

The Least Likely, Kelly Hu's project for CAUSE, made in an effort to get Asian-Americans to become more politically active and less apathetic (the name comes from the fact that Asians are the racial group that is least likely to vote each year, with only about one-third doing so). Rumors of an actual movie to go with the trailer still circulate.

The second season premiere of The Boondocks opens with a trailer for Soul Plane 2 (the original (which had John Witherspoon, who's also on The Boondocks) being one of Aaron McGruder's least favorite movies), and the episode itself revolves around its premiere.

Other trailers include Laff-A-Munich and "1776", the American Revolution told 300-style, complete with Mundane Made Awesome slow-motion zooms on the signing of the declaration, and the tagline "It's not accurate, but it'll blow your mind!"

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